Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham eBook

Breaks the proud billows which her large sides knock;
Whose rage restrained, foaming higher swells,
And from her port the weary barge repels,
Threat’ning to make her, forced out again,
Repeat the dangers of the troubled main.
Twice was the cable hurl’d in vain; the Fates
Would not be moved for our sister states;
For England is the third successful throw,
And then the genius of that land they know,
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Whose prince must be (as their own books devise)
Lord of the scene where now his danger lies.

Well sung the Roman bard, ’All human things
Of dearest value hang on slender strings.’
Oh, see the then sole hope, and, in design
Of Heaven, our joy, supported by a line!
Which for that instant was Heaven’s care above
The chain that’s fixed to the throne of Jove,
On which the fabric of our world depends;
One link dissolved, the whole creation ends.
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[1] ‘St. Andero’: St. Andrews.
He had newly abandoned his suit
for the Infanta.—­
[2] ‘Arion sings’: Alluding to the
deliverance of Charles I., on his
return from Spain, from a
violent storm in the Bay of Biscay,
October 1623.
[3] ‘Sort’: a company. [4] ‘Adventurous
son’: Phaeton. [5] Henrietta, afterwards
Queen. [6] Venus.

OF HIS MAJESTY’S RECEIVING THE NEWS OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM’S

So earnest with thy God! can no new care,
No sense of danger, interrupt thy prayer?
The sacred wrestler, till a blessing given,
Quits not his hold, but halting conquers Heaven;
Nor was the stream of thy devotion stopp’d,
When from the body such a limb was lopp’d,
As to thy present state was no less maim,
Though thy wise choice has since repair’d the
same.
Bold Homer durst not so great virtue feign
In his best pattern:[2] of Patroclus slain,
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With such amazement as weak mothers use,
And frantic gesture, he receives the news.
Yet fell his darling by th’impartial chance
Of war, imposed by royal Hector’s lance;
Thine, in full peace, and by a vulgar hand
Torn from thy bosom, left his high command.

The famous painter[3] could allow no place
For private sorrow in a prince’s face:
Yet, that his piece might not exceed belief,
He cast a veil upon supposed grief.
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’Twas want of such a precedent as this
Made the old heathen frame their gods amiss.
Their Phoebus should not act a fonder part
For the fair boy,[4] than he did for his heart;
Nor blame for Hyacinthus’ fate his own,
That kept from him wish’d death, hadst thou
been known.